Interpretive Summary: With the prevalence of cotton trash comingled with lint through all stages of processing “from the field to fabric”, much interest by the textile community has been garnered. Thus, this project is aimed at identification of non-lint extraneous matter that can lower the marketability of cotton due to its presence. The chemical imaging technique has the advantages of being accurate, precise, requiring little sample preparation and short analysis time. A “proof of concept” has been demonstrated that chemical imaging can be used to identify cotton lint from cotton botanical trash.

Technical Abstract:
There is some interest in the textile community about the identity of cotton trash that has become comingled with cotton lint. Currently, trash is identified visually by human “classers” and instrumentally by the Advanced Fiber Information System (AFIS) and the High Volume Instrument (HVI). Although these methods can be successfully used to examine cotton trash, the “classer” method is subjective and is strongly affected by human error within and between “classers” while the AFIS and HVI methods do not yield specificity in the identity of cotton trash types. Previously, it has been demonstrated that spectroscopic analysis of cotton trash yields information about the origin of the cotton trash. In the current study, chemical imaging of cotton trash shows the promise of yielding qualitative information of some trash types.